Analysis: In a runoff election today, 10/31/05, for Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders and Donna Frye finish "too-close-to-call," according to a SurveyUSA poll of 532 likely city of San Diego voters, conducted exclusively for KGTV-TV. Election day is 11/8. Sanders today gets 50% of the vote, up 2 points from an identical SurveyUSA poll 5 weeks ago. Frye today gets 48%, down 1 point. Frye led by 1 point on 9/27/05, trails by 2 points today 10/31/05. Both results are within the polls' margin of sampling error. Analysis should not report today's data as "the lead changing hands," but should observe that the contest remains statistically even, and that turnout will determine the winner. In a special election 7/26/05, Frye got 43%, to 27% for Sanders and 24% for Steve Francis, who endorsed Sanders after finishing 3rd. 92% of Francis's voters now choose Sanders. Sanders leads 5:1 among conservatives, 6:1 among Republicans, 2:1 among voters who have not gone to college. Frye leads 4:1 among liberals, 3:1 among Democrats, 5:4 among the most educated voters. Sanders leads among voters over age 50, trails among voters under 50. Dick Murphy, who narrowly defeated Frye's write-in candidacy last November, resigned as Mayor effective 7/15/05.

Pollster Caution: A) City government in San Diego is unstable. Electorate is volatile. Circumstances are unprecedented, posing unique challenges to pollsters. B) SurveyUSA conducted this research using random sample, provided by Survey Sampling, Inc., of Fairfield, CT. A competing pollster, Datamar, based in El Cajon, CA, is polling the contest using a different approach, working from a list of Registered Voters. Datamar's poll results differ from SurveyUSA's. The competitor's poll results are available for comparison, here.

Filtering: 1,200 city of San Diego adults were interviewed 10/28/05 - 10/30/05. Of them, 988 were registered voters. Of them, 532 were judged to be "likely" voters. Crosstabs reflect "likely" voters.